Labour lends support to native cause

November 4, 2009 Brantford Expositor

More than 200 native land claims activists and supporters made their voices heard loudly Saturday afternoon, at a mobile rally march that began at Victoria Park and made several stops before ending with a celebratory pot-luck feast at Kanata Village.

Labour groups were among the most vocal supporters, with representatives of CUPE, the Canadian Autoworkers and the United Steelworkers all taking the microphone to declare solidarity with the native activists.

Rolf Gerstenberger, the president of USW Local 1005, read from the plaque in front of the Joseph Brant Memorial, noting that land was promised to the people of Six Nations for helping the British defeat the Americans in the War of 1812.

That promise hasn't amounted to much at all, he said: "That's how they thanked the native people for shedding their blood for them."

Gerstenberger said it's up to Canada's non-native peoples to get involved.

"We have to get our elected representatives to recognize the claims," he said to cheers. "Unfortunately, Canadians have this block (about historical agreements) -they don't want to know."

And he accused the federal government of deliberately stalling land claims negotiations in order to draw the process out.

"They've been doing that for 200 years ... Let's negotiate, let's talk, while we steal the whole country."

But natives need not ask permission to express their own sovereignty, added a representative of Young Onkwehonwe United (YOU).

Missy Elliot -"my POW name" - told natives, unionists, and people from other political, aboriginal and ethnic organizations that "we must recognize this power that we have here today -it's immense.

"The government can never give us our sovereignty ... like (U. S. civil rights activist) Malcolm X said, 'Whatever they give you, they can take away.' "

Instead, she urged, the people should stand forward in self-determination.

"This is sovereignty. We have the power inside us to change everything that's going on."

She thanked the non-natives present for their support and compared a potential collectivization to the banding of the Five Nations of the Iroquois -as they were then known, before the Tuscarora joined in the 18th century.

"We need this unity between native and non-native groups," she said. "We must come together, be free to come together ... we can't stay apart any more."

Elliot also introduced John Henhawk, a fellow YOU member who urged young aboriginals to get serious about their identity and speak up -while cleaning up their own lives at the same time.

"Stop being violent," he said. "Put down the weapons, put down the drugs and empower yourself.

"Pick up a drum -know your culture, empower yourself."

The unionists' strong feeling of connection to the native land claims issue may have seemed odd to some, but CAW national council president Tim Carrie said there's a definite parallel between the two situations.

"This issue here is about negotiations," he said. "The only way you can get a collective agreement between two parties is to sit across the table from them."

In the case of the natives, he said, it has become plain that the federal and provincial governments are not interested in sitting at the table.

"As a consequence, the municipality of Brantford has put an injunction on demonstrators."

Carrie was referring to Brantford's request for an injunction against protesters at development sites. A court order by Justice Harrison Arrell arose from that, compelling the city and native groups to enter into "meaningful consultation, negotiation, accommodation and reconciliation" to resolve their issue, under the eye of the provincial government. Until an arrangement is reached, the order forbids protesting at the work sites.

"It would be like us not being able to picket on a picket line," Carrie added. "If we can't picket ... there's no pressure on the employer to come to an agreement."

The rally was organized in part by Jim Windle, editor of the Tekawennake newspaper and a founding member of TRUE -Two-Row Understanding through Education.

Windle noted the "eclectic" nature of the supporters at the rally, saying that they have come Saturday united in a common cause -a growing dissatisfaction with a federal government he described as having "turned suddenly more fascist than anything over the last few years."